A 24-YEAR-old football player was electrocuted during a physiotherapy session after touching a faulty machine, a post mortem revealed yesterday.
Andreas Nicos Ioachim from Frenaros was undergoing therapy for an old leg injury on a special machine on Thursday night when he was electrocuted.
It had initially been thought that the machine being used on him at the physiotherapy clinic had caused his death, but yesterday it emerged it was a second machine that was at fault.
"I carried out an autopsy on the body and his death was caused by electrocution," said state pathologist Sophoclis Sophocleous.
Ioachim played football for Enosis Neon Paralimni. Previously he had played for Elpida Xylophagou, with whom he sustained his leg injury two years ago.
Asked by journalists about the therapy machine, Sophocleous said: "It seems that there was a machine next to him which had a problem and he probably touched this and was electrocuted."
Ioachim’s death occurred at around 6.45pm on Thursday, six minutes into his therapy at a Frenaros clinic.
All efforts to revive him failed, and Ioachim was pronounced dead on arrival at Paralimni hospital.
According to reports from Larnaca, the clinic’s owner went into shock and was taken to a private clinic in Paralimni where he was kept in overnight for observation.
Michalis Hadjiroussos, a senior official with the government’s Electrical and Mechanical Services, said yesterday that from initial investigations they had established that the electrical fault lay with the second machine, which had been within reach of Ioachim and which he had touched with his hand.
"We discovered unfortunately that a machine near the unlucky athlete, which was wired incorrectly and probably broken, caused the accident," Hadjiroussos said.
He said the investigation would nevertheless continue.
"This phenomenon (faulty wiring) is very common, not only at gyms but at amusement parks and everywhere," Hadjiroussos said. "Machines are being put together by amateur electricians, causing fatal accidents to the unlucky people who use them.
People have to know that electricity is dangerous and kills."
He said that only certified electricians should be allowed to wire machines.
"It’s not a matter of (government) control," he added. "It’s a matter of owners being responsible."
